4. Monsters | Lyra
Lyra wanted to argue. She wanted to rage against the chains both on her wrists and the ones that wound around her heart with each second they neared Atlantis.
That could not have been right. She didn’t want the throne. She didn’t want that kind of responsibility.
Lyra had come back for one reason and one reason only—she had a bargain to uphold.
“What is it?” Drystan asked, surveying her sidelong as he navigated them through large porous rocks and shipwreck debris.
“Nothing,” Lyra said, shaking her head. “I’m still adjusting.”
There was no way she would tell him her true plans here.
Aside from breaking the tithe, she wanted to make his life as miserable as possible. It was no less than he deserved.
She took a deep breath, letting the saltwater soothe the ache and burn along her sides.
Drystan had been right about that part. She was of the sea, and it welcomed her back.
It hadn’t been a jovial greeting, yet it was a reception all the same. The water warmed, and the scent became staggering as it shifted to something akin to rot.
Shadows darted just out of Lyra’s line of sight.
The constant thrum of the current was loud, making it impossible for her to hear anything that wasn’t right beside her now.
Everything became too much.
It was too loud, too overwhelming, too oppressive.
A crawling sensation erupted along her flesh as a shiver walked its way down her spine.
Drystan ripped her to a stop and wrenched her behind a boulder large enough to conceal them both twice over. She opened her mouth to object, but he pressed a finger to his lips.
“Pay attention,” he hissed against the side of her head.
A reptilian beast emerged from the bow of a rotting ship, its massive head swinging side to side before it retreated into the shadows. Each of its scales was the size of her palm.
It appeared more like a dragon than a fish.
A predator from a world that no longer existed.
They had to be at the pinnacle of the food chain because what could keep their population in check?
The stories were true about their existence.
Her heart fluttered against her ribcage as if it, too, wanted to flee. The shackles on her wrists shook with the tremors that assaulted her.
Drystan wound his free arm around her, pulling her to him and holding her still.
Captain Brine and several of the other guards had taken positions behind a boulder closer to the shipwreck.
Lyra could see their hands unsheathing swords or pulling spears from the straps on their backs as they readied.
Captain Brine, gripping a golden broadsword, slipped from the safety of the boulder and positioned himself in front of the darkness the sobek had emerged from.
Lyra stared in wide-eyed horror as he floated like bait.
The sobek didn’t emerge.
The captain signaled the others forward.
His bright-orange tail was a signal of security.
His helmet concealed most of his face, and the spiked armor along his chest and shoulders appeared far more formidable than the armor her father had favored for his guard.
Almost too formidable.
Yet it had not mattered.
The sobek struck like lightning.
Spearing from the shadows of the ship, it launched itself at Captain Brine and unhinged its massive jaw before clamping down on the captain with a sickening crunch.
It had been too quick for Lyra to even suck in a breath as the sobek tipped its head back and swallowed the rest of the captain whole.
Her whole body vibrated with fear.
Drystan cursed under his breath.
Shouts rang out as the guards hurtled from their defensive positions and began attacking the sobek.
Blood floated up from its shut jaws and drifted lazily in the current.
A dinner bell.
Lyra watched in horror as the monstrous shadows drew near, scenting the blood.
The entirety of the guard had descended upon the sobek that had devoured the captain, unaware of the beasts that were swimming their way.
Their weapons glanced off the beast’s impenetrable hide, and it sounded like nails against stone.
One of the shadows became a solid, rampaging beast, and another sobek darted out from beside the stern of the ship, biting clean through a silver tail.
The guard’s bloodcurdling scream had a vice clamping down on Lyra’s throat.
Four more sobeks appeared, ripping him apart into fleshy pulp that polluted the greenish water to a near-black.
Blood was so thick in the water that as more and more guards succumbed to the massacre, it acted like a curtain blotting out the carnage behind it.
What it couldn’t block out was the sound of unfettered terror. Shouts echoed through the wreckage, twining with the sounds of feeding. Bones crunched as they met jaws of impossible strength.
The sounds of flesh being torn apart had bile surging up through her constricted throat.
Lyra had the overwhelming urge to run. But there was nowhere to run to now.
Drystan tightened his grip on her, and she glanced up into his calm face.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Lyra whisper-shrieked from their hiding place.
Their only reprieve came from the beasts being unaware of two hidden meals behind the boulder.
Drystan continued watching the slaughter unfold before dragging his eyes to her.
“Me? Why don’t you do something?”
Lyra fumbled for the thread of magic around her heart and came up empty. It was still dull.
The magic, nothing but a wisp, after using it in its totality to save Wilder.
Wilder.
His name burned on her tongue as she thought of him. She had to survive so that she could see him again.
Her love for him soothed the jagged edges of her fear.
There had been a time on land when she had felt the same as she did now, and he had come for her—had saved her.
But there was no one to save her now.
No one had ever saved her when she lived in the water.
A sobek snarled, the sound loud and close, too close.
Lyra flinched, and her hair snagged in Drystan’s armor. Strands tore from her scalp, but she felt nothing as she stared into the reflective eyes that pierced her soul in the murky light.
Fear coiled tight around each of her muscles, and she pressed herself into the hard rock at her back.
“Find your voice,” Drystan ordered. “Use that magic you used to save the elf.”
Lyra clutched her throat, eyes pleading. “I c-can’t.”
If this was his plan for survival, then they were both as good as gone already.
“We’re going to die if you don’t.”
Her mind conjured up images of jaws biting through her arms and tail like serrated blades.
There were few remaining screams and guttural cries of pain coming from behind them.
The guards were already dead, and they were about to be next.
“I don’t have any magic left,” she cried, her tail twisting and twitching as she readied herself to make a break for it.
She didn’t have to be strong, just faster than him.
Drystan sighed, and it was so full of annoyance she pulled her eyes from their impending demise and gaped as he pushed off the boulder beside her with a roll of his eyes.
Despite herself, she reached for him as if she would pull him to safety.
Drystan raised the trident over his head, and everything stopped.
The sobek stalking them froze before retreating into the shadows.
Water cleared as the blood dissipated. The seabed swallowed the remnants of the corpses.
Silence.
The guards were dead.
All of them.
Yet Drystan and Lyra were still alive. Completely unscathed and now not even on the menu.
Drystan faced her. The smug smile twisting his features had understanding slamming into her chest and taking her breath away.
“You were testing me?” she asked, her bottom lip quivering as the terror in her veins subsided and an icy chill took its place.
New—alive—guards emerged from behind the ship, all bearing golden hair and green tails that were common for this territory.
One approached Drystan and held out a circle made of sea urchin spines. The sharp, black spines shimmered in the watery light and struck fear into the core of her.
Waving off the guard and glaring at what he held, “You were never in any danger.”
“How dare you!” Lyra screamed, lunging for him again.
Guards restrained her as she struggled to reach him.
“I fucking hate you!”
Drystan grinned at her, and it crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“You know they say there’s a thin line between love and hate.”
He said it so joyously, and it was such a stark contrast to the grotesque scene they still stood in.
Glittering scales littered the seabed, and Lyra spied what she thought might be a piece of a finger sinking into the seabed.
Drystan picked up the finger and studied the ring that was still wrapped around it.
Lyra’s mind was still grappling with pieces.
He had butchered his own guards.
“Why?” Her voice trembled as she worked to calm her body from the ill effects of fearing for her life.
Drystan pulled the ring off and let the finger sink back to the sand. He tossed the ring at her, and she caught it as it floated in the current.
She twisted it in her fingers to see her father’s seal.
A trident among the waves, emblazoned in gold.
“They weren’t loyal to me.” His attention shifted from her to the finger he stroked along the shaft of the trident. “And now your secret is safe again.”
The guard never took his eyes off Lyra, as if she were the biggest threat to his king.
“I don’t want to collar you, Lyra. But I will, for your safety and mine.”
Lyra’s eyes narrowed. “When I kill you, it won’t be with my magic. I can assure you of that.”
More guards slipped into position, and she ripped her arm out of their grips as they tried to take hold of her.
“How did you do it? How did you take the throne?”
Drystan scanned her face as if he were looking for something.
The gold of his armor seemed to swallow the remaining murky light. With powerful strokes of his emerald tail, he propelled himself in front of her.
“Atlantis has changed. You said you didn’t think there was anything worse than me on the throne—” Lyra nodded her agreement, clamping down on her tongue to keep from interrupting his gift of information. “You will thank me for what I have done for you—for us.”
He was so close to her that she could glimpse the true color of his eyes.
They were gold, as bright as the sun, with a ring of onyx surrounding them.
They were familiar to her somehow, but she couldn’t place where.
“We’ve lingered long enough. Let’s move,” Drystan’s voice thundered with command, and they set off.
The guard on her left bore scars down the left side of his face that puckered his lips into a grimace. When he caught her staring, he tightened his grip, and Lyra winced at the pressure.
“Easy, Fang,” Drystan growled, and the guard complied.
Drystan turned before she could say anything else and led them through the inky depths.
The guards at her sides pulled her along, and she didn’t stop fighting against their hold.
Lyra couldn’t fathom the cruel calculation that had been required for what he had just achieved, both sacrificing the original guards and usurping her father. He must have had an unimaginable amount of help.
King Auris had been the epitome of power, commanding loyalty from each territory not just in might but by blood.
He had married off all of her sisters to each ruling prince.
Lyra had surmised that his influence had been limitless.
They passed a vast sea cave. The shadowed entrance stretched open like the maw of an ancient beast.
Ithicais was carved from such caverns—an underground city of chiseled stone, polished by centuries of passage.
Only one other territory rivaled such abundant history—Zeal—with its archaic temples.
“How much longer?” Lyra asked Fang.
He didn’t reply, but the scar beside his mouth twitched.
The guard on her right cleared his throat. He was similar in age and size to Fang, but there was a menacing quality to the hard lines of his face. He reminded her of a shark.
“It depends on the path we take.”
Lyra grimaced as burning rippled down her sides from so much use of her tail.
There were muscles there she hadn’t used since her time on land, and they were screaming their protest now.
She cataloged the rest of her aches and pains.
They hadn’t traveled very far, but her fatigue was heavy, and she slumped against the grip of the guards, allowing them to pull her more than she swam.
Her fingertips ached from the eruption of her talons, like the soreness of flesh after a removed splinter.
The flesh around the root of her scales was sensitive from their regrowth as well.
But something tugged at the back of her mind like an incessant nagging that something was wrong, but she couldn’t place it.
It felt like a ghost or a shadow, or maybe more like an absence of self.
Fang halted their advance, his hand leaving her arm as he approached a sea cave.
Lyra’s face pinched with a scowl as he ripped a makeshift trident from the ground and crumbled it in his grip. Pieces of the splintered driftwood floated to the seabed and were swept away with a powerful thrust of his tail.
“Religious zealots,” he muttered under his breath, wrapping a hand around her arm and pulling her along again.
Lyra opened her mouth to question his meaning, but the fury that radiated off him had her swallowing her questions.